


In His Head

by hellsinki



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Insanity, M/M, free indirect discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:04:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsinki/pseuds/hellsinki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is slipping away and some day he will not be where you left him. Some day he will only be a photographed smile, a sloppy line on a grocery list, or a faint scent on your bed sheets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Head

Chaos follows in your wake; your insanity is no longer an abstract term hanging around your neck like a figurative noose, threatening to strangle you when no one’s looking. It is as palpable and physical as yourself, or on the worst days, even more so. It is right here in your gaze, dripping down your face like beads of sweat, dampening your white hooded jacket, filling the distance between our bodies with a thick presence that reeks of plague and nausea. You have stopped making sure that you look alright a long time ago. It doesn’t make a difference, you admitted one day, and grimaced as you swallowed your pills. It’d be easier too, pretending to be fine, but with everything else gone to shits, it’d be pointless. I don’t do pointless, and you grinned as you said it, but the smile looked wrong on your face, the scar was too stretched across your lips, as if your mouth was about to be torn apart, and I told you to stop it. You wondered why I still cared. I don’t, I assured you, not because I hated you, but because that was what you wanted to hear. You hardly asked anything from us, always giving and not expecting anything in return. You gave me a book you had stolen from an antique bookstore as a birthday gift (it hadn’t been my birthday- I never told you when it was), but I didn’t give you anything for your birthday even though I knew when it was. I asked you what you wanted. Why do you want to know, you asked with a frown, puzzling over my motives. Because I want you to have it, I want to give it to you. You burst into laughter, an ugly one, and I thought about kissing you to shut you up, but I didn't because I had forgotten the taste of your lips and was afraid to find it gone. You can’t give it to me; no one can, you sobbed and I grabbed your shoulders because you were going into spasms. Sometimes the pills wouldn’t work, and I had to hold onto your shaking body so hard that you’d bruise. But what is it, Desmond? What is it that you want? Your eyes were bright, more golden than brown, shining with sickness and fever, beautiful in their tragedy. My sanity, you whimpered; I want my sanity back.

 

* * *

 

There are specks of blood down the corridor and I panic, thinking of Rebecca. Things have been touch and go with you after Lucy, and ever since, we have all started to think of you not just as a victim, a sacrificial lamb, but as a dangerous man with the potential of becoming a murderer at any moment. I follow the trace of blood all the way down to the bathroom, but there is only you inside, and guiltily I feel relieved. You turn around. There is blood on your hands; lots of it. Its metallic odor is overwhelming, my stomach churns. Not mine, you say, and put your hands up in a sign of surrender, but perhaps it is just so I can get a better look at them.

It _is_ yours. All of the blood on your hands. Looking at them now, I can see two wide, jagged gashes on your palms, bleeding badly and you are just standing there, without any shirt on, looking completely unfazed. It is as if you can’t even feel the burn, or the slightest regret over the rapid flow of blood leaving your body in tiny scarlet rivers.

Desmond, what have you done to yourself?

I didn’t do anything, you back off and drop your hands, causing the blood to get on your bare torso, on your worn-out jeans, pooling around your bare feet, mixing with the water, creating small ripples of pink on the tiles. I am transfixed by the sight of so much blood on you. You are not crying or groaning in pain and somehow that makes everything look like a bad joke I want to laugh at just to humor you, a bad dream from which I want to shake both of us awake.

Desmond, what’s going on? You’re bleeding!

I’m not, you say firmly, slowly, as if the time has come to a halt, as if you are speaking under water, as if there is no air. I’m not Desmond. 


End file.
